We're getting after the next eight albums from the 1976 Hideaway 40: The Albums today. We've featured albums 40 through 25 in previous posts. Click HERE if you missed any of our countdown. For those of you who enjoy my rambling remembrances of my Dad, there's a lot of that in this missive. Also, this is one of those posts where I annoyingly share which pressing of each album is my favorite to listen to. We like what we like, ya know? And now, here are the albums I like from 1976 that I ranked 24 through 17...
24
Nights Are Forever
England Dan & John Ford Coley
Dan and John had been dropped by A&M after two failed albums in 1971 and 1972. The duo regrouped in Nashville, their new producer hooked them up with a couple of tunes from songwriter Parker McGee, which earned the boys a record deal with Big Tree Records. Those two songs became the album's first two singles: "I'd Really Love To See You Tonight" and "Nights Are Forever Without You". Both songs sounded great to me. The former appeared on a few K-Tel comps in 1977; I picked up the latter single on 45 in early 1977. A couple of years later, Dad picked up the Oldies 45 with those two singles on either side of the same 45. It met its fate when he decided to chuck his sizeable collection of 45s and 8-track tapes into a dumpster where he worked in 2002. I was nearly 1,200 miles away and was not consulted. He didn't tell me until months later; when I hung up the phone, I cried a little. This album is a good listen for me. It's got soft rock, folk rock, and a bit of country, but it's those two singles that will come up, catch my attention, then get played a dozen times in a row before I snap out of whatever trance they put me in. I haven't had the pleasure of auditioning the well-liked 2000 Japanese pressing or the elusive 2005 Wounded Bird repressing, so my favorite pressing of Nights Are Forever is on Edsel's 2015 compilation of The Atlantic Albums.
23
Wings At The Speed Of Sound
Wings
I'm on record stating that my sixth-grade girlfriend was named Diana. Or Janet. Depending on which post you read. (It's amazing how crystal clear some memories are while others are fuzzier than my ears.) I bought the "Silly Love Songs" 45 for one of them, and after she broke up with me over the weekend, she returned the 45 with a deliberate scratch running across the record so it could be heard throughout the song. Still love the song, though. I was a latecomer to the album, just in the last two or three decades, after picking up the DCC disc. With its three bonus tracks, it's how I prefer to listen to Wings At The Speed Of Sound, with "Sally G." closing out the proceedings. The 2014 remaster of the album also sounds very good to my ears, nice and dynamic, though the bonus disc of seven tracks does nothing for me. (Before you even ask me about Give My Regards To Broad Street, the answer is "NO".) I recall both Diana B. and Janet L. being "girlfriends" of pre-teen me in fifth grade, though when "Silly Love Songs" was released, I was still in fourth grade, so who the heck knows.
22
A Day At The Races
Queen
As I may have mentioned a few times, Dad liked "Bohemian Rhapsody" and had the 45. I got in serious trouble for damaging the record – well, more so for getting caught playing Dad's records on his system. He never bought any other music by Queen. The first Queen music I bought was the "We Will Rock You"/"We Are The Champions" 45. My first Queen album was a cassette of Jazz, shortly followed by the Greatest Hits album. Hearing "Somebody To Love" on the compilation was a revelation. It took me a few years, but eventually I went back and got every Queen album I had missed as well as their "New Releases". I enjoy listening to A Day At The Races after listening to A Night At The Opera. They sound better together in that context to me. I hear the band's songwriting and sound evolving. "Somebody To Love" might be my favorite track from those two albums, while my preferred pressing is the 1986 German disc. The sound bests the 1996 MFSL and 2011 SACD remasters in my book. (I have not heard the 2016 SACD for comparison.)
21
A Night On The Town
Rod Stewart
One of Dad's favorite 8-tracks when he came home from his final tour in Vietnam was Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells A Story. His tape was a brick red plastic, and what I recall most about listening to it was the big KA-CHUNK! sound during "(I Know) I'm Losing You" as the tape head switched from the third to the fourth program. (Still anticipate it sometimes after more than fifty years of listening to uninterrupted versions of the track.) The cumulative hours spent listening to the tape made me a Rod Stewart fan, at least through his Eighties albums. As much as Dad loved Every Picture Tells A Story, he did not buy another Rod Stewart album until Footloose and Fancy Free after the Jagger-swagger of "Hot Legs" caught his ear. In the early Nineties, when I was able to begin my journey back through Stewart's catalog, I got hung up on several of Stewart's hits compilations before further exploring his proper albums. I had liked the sound of "Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright)" when I heard it on the radio (and I heard it a lot!) back in 1976 and 1977, just not enough to grab the 45. Finally picked up A Night On The Town as stores were blowing out their vinyl inventories in favor of cassettes and CDs. Immediately fell in love with Side I, aka the Slow Side: "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)", "The First Cut Is The Deepest", "Fool For You", and "The Killing Of Georgie" are so so good. The 2013 high-resolution remastering offered on HDTracks is my favorite way to listen to the album.
20
Hasten Down The Wind
Linda Ronstadt
I recall flipping through Dad's albums to see which ones he got while I was in Texas for most of the summer, and I was happy to see Hasten Down The Wind there in the stack. Linda's cover of "That'll Be The Day" triggered or coincided with Dad's renewed interest in Buddy Holly's music, and I recall him playing Holly's A Rock & Roll Collection quite a bit; Ronstadt would go on to cover another Holly tune ("It's So Easy" in 1977). My current opinion on Hasten Down The Wind is that it is Linda Ronstadt exercising her contemporary taste in which songs and songwriters to cover. She has always seemed to have a good ear, or at least be open to suggestions from her longtime producer, Peter Asher, or the guys in her band. It's interesting to me that this is her seventh solo album, just as Rod Stewart's A Night On the Town is his seventh solo album, and both artists are on the cusp of their biggest successes. The best-sounding pressing of Hasten Down The Wind, to my ears, is the 2009 MFSL compact disc. In particular, the harmony vocals and acoustic guitars on the song "Lo Siento Mi Vida" simply shine.
19
Arrival
ABBA
Early ABBA hits "SOS" and "Waterloo" had appeared on Ronco and K-Tel albums that Dad and I had in our respective collections. And I had heard the "Fernando" 45 in a distant cousin's dingy, killing-room basement before I heard it on WLS in 1976. When I signed up with the RCA Music Service, ABBA's Greatest Hits was one of the albums I selected in my initial order. And then "Dancing Queen" hit. There was a what may have been a solid month to six weeks where that song was absolutely everywhere. Snagged the 45 one day when I found it hidden within a bunch of KISS albums. Didn't get Arrival until 2002 or 2003, when I picked up five new ABBA 2001 digipack compact discs marked down to $2.99 each in a random cardboard bin in the middle of Borders. When I pull up Arrival for a listen, I prefer the 1984 German pressing. It's not as loud as some of the later pressings, and it doesn't have any bonus tracks, but it sounds pretty dang good.
18
Destroyer
KISS
I got my first KISS album (Dynasty) in 1981. Dynasty was also my first KISS CD in 1987. Shortly after that, 1987 pressings of Destroyer and Double Platinum joined Dynasty on the shelf. In the years that followed, I've acquired dozens of KISS discs and digital downloads through several reissue and remaster campaigns. My most played KISS disc is Smashes, Thrashes, and Hits. The polarizing disc features updated remixes of classic KISS songs, and it just sounds better to my ears. Go ahead, court-martial and dishonorably discharge me from the KISS Army. I don't care. Hearing the complete "Detroit Rock City" on the album wasn't the revelation that a lot of album-length songs have been for me; however, it was more weird than anything. I still prefer to hear the single edit. As each KISS disc has been re-released, the mastering has gotten louder and louder (which tracks because the band's fans are getting older and older and deafer and deafer), but I find the levels of the 2014 high-resolution remastered version of Destroyer to be in my sweet spot. Louder than the first CDs but not compressed to death, from the fragility of the ballad "Beth" to the thunderous "Shout It Out Loud" to make them stand out from the initial 1987 CD.
17
Lake
Lake
It's been nearly ten years since I first came across Lake's eponymously titled first album while doing research for a list of my favorite songs from 1977. Since then, I've listened to the album maybe twenty times, and nearly every single one of those times, something different has stood out to me, whether it was a sound, a voice, an instrument, a lyric – you get it. The album is still revealing itself to me. Despite this continuing interest in Lake, I've yet to dive into the rest of their discography. The only pressing of Lake I've listened to has been the 1997 two-fer compact disc from Renaissance that also features the band's third album, Paradise Island.
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